LONDON — Greater innovation will be needed to avoid an impending crisis in cellphone antennas, according to market trackers Strategy Analytics in a just published report on antenna technologies.
"Future cellular devices will have to handle seven or more primary cellular bands, diversity antennas, and three or more bands for connectivity peripherals, placing difficult performance demands on cellular antennas -- among these, the need for several small antennas placed in close proximity to each other and the users' head and hand," warns Christopher Taylor, Director of the RF and Wireless Components group at Strategy Analytics.
"Device makers hope to avert an antenna crisis by teaming with antenna specialists, such as Laird, Tyco, Pulse, Ethertronics and Skycross, to make use of new antenna technologies that will include tunable and active antennas," added Taylor.
Companies that succeed will reap rich rewards, suggests Taylor, since "these technologies and companies will help propel the market for antennas for wireless mobile devices to more than 5 billion units in 2014."
Any new technologies and approaches must add a new dimension to the cellular RF front business, affecting power amp, switch-module, filter and chipset suppliers, as well as the way OEMs do business, Strategy Analytics stresses.
